Irish Prime Minister visits Zenith Technologies in Whitpain

Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland Enda Kenny, right, speaks to employees of Zenith Technologies at their Whitpain Township headquarters after unveiling a company logo and plaque with company Founder and CEO Brendan O’Regan, left. Photo by Dan Sokil/Journal Register News Service

WHITPAIN — It’s not every day that a foreign head of state stops by the office to chat with employees.

Zenith Technologies, located on Arbor Way in Whitpain, is not just any business — as its employees heard directly from Taoiseach, or Prime Minister, of Ireland Enda Kenny on Friday.

“I’m very happy to meet you all here, shake your hands, and say that the work you’re doing is a grand image of America and a grand image of Ireland, and it’s very important we keep those connections and those understandings very much alive,” Kenny said.

“What you’re doing at Zenith is great, really, and I admire the work you do,” he said.

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What does Zenith do? CEO and founder Brendan O’Regan gave a short summary after he and Kenny unveiled a company logo and commemorative plaque marking the official visit.

“Systems for manufacturing of pharmaceuticals — we work exclusively in life sciences, on controls for software and hardware systems throughout the manufacturing process,” said O’Regan.

Zenith is headquartered in Cork, Ireland, and currently operates five European and two Asian offices, in addition to four in North America. More than 50 North American employees in California, Massachusetts and North Carolina are overseen from the new U.S. headquarters, which O’Regan said came about through longtime relationships with area pharmaceutical companies including GSK, Merck, Novartis, Amgen and Almac, among others.

“This (visit) is certainly an affirmative stamp of approval, I suppose, on what we’re doing here. It makes for good copy and good press, and makes it a good validation of what we’re at,” O’Regan said.

Zenith was founded in 1998 and established its U.S. offices with help from Enterprise Ireland, an agency of the Irish government that develops and promotes businesses worldwide amongst what Kenny termed a global family of those with ties to Ireland.

“For us, as a small country with less than 5 million at home, but with a big family outside of 70 million, we want to keep this (effort) very much alive here,” he said.

“You here at Zenith are going to be involved in building those platforms that are going to make the world even more efficient and effective than it has ever been,” Kenny said.

Zenith has occupied the new building since May, but O’Regan used the VIP visit on Friday to announce two new product lines: a Zenith-managed Service Model that helps automate technology systems for life science organizations, and the Incident Control Room, a cloud-based management system that can handle incidents that companies encounter while processing pharmaceuticals.

During his visit, the Taoiseach shook hands and talked with each of the roughly two dozen Zenith employees at the new headquarters, along with representatives of several area pharmaceutical companies — and singled out David McCarthy, founder of the Incident Control Room system, in particular.

“Young Dave has only a few days here, and already Americans (have) taken up by him with the architecture in his hair,” he said, gesturing to McCarthy’s spiked haircut — “that shows the kind of people that we are here: creative and imaginative.”

Kenny then vowed to stop by McCarthy’s Incident Control Room facility in County Cork the next time he is able, and McCarthy said after the speech that despite the kidding about his appearance, “it’s a great day, the Prime Minister is here and knows me.”

Several county and state economic development representatives, as well as state and local elected officials, took part in the meet-and-greet and shared their thoughts on the county’s strong base of medical and pharmaceutical industry. U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-13th District, complimented O’Regan on the new facility and said she hoped it would expand soon.

State Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-170th District, said he thought the new headquarters showed the importance of expanded trade with America’s 13th-largest trading partner, and Rep. Kate Harper, R-61st District, said she hoped Zenith and its affiliates would draw on the highly educated workforce available in the county.

“These jobs are very important to the area, Zenith is a great company, and like I’ve always said, the Irish can do some wonderful things when they get together,” she said with a wink.

Friday marked Kenny’s first visit to a Zenith facility in the United States, and O’Regan said he expects the company to double in size over the next two years as its operations grow — a plan the Taoiseach said he would do what he could to assist.

“The world we live in is changing at a bewildering speed, and even now there are companies in competition with yours in other places around the world that are thinking of different ways of doing things, products that haven’t yet been thought of, and inventions that haven’t even been considered,” Kenny said.

As his country recovers from the global economic downturn, he said, innovative and globalized companies like Zenith will be at the forefront of what he called “making good progress through choppy waters,” and Kenny invited all present to visit Ireland next year for The Gathering, an international business festival scheduled to last throughout 2013.

“We’re now looked at internationally as a very different country: as a country that’s serious about our businesses, as a country that’s making decisions that affect our people in a challenging way,” he said.

“We’re now recognized from a business point of view, a leadership point of view, a political point of view and an economic point of view as an example of how a small country can stand up and measure up to its responsibilities, the same as you do here.”